But apart from losers...
And Bolt, nobody reads this site. And I'm happy to keep it that way.
Iain, you are an embarassment of a human being. Please read at least at single book before posting next.
David Tan, you were conceived in a petri dish. In which flies have shat. It's not your fault. Just relax in future.
I work mostly in Brunswick, by the way. I'm waiting to see what will happen when you 'expose' someone like me...
Iain, you are an embarassment of a human being. Please read at least at single book before posting next.
David Tan, you were conceived in a petri dish. In which flies have shat. It's not your fault. Just relax in future.
I work mostly in Brunswick, by the way. I'm waiting to see what will happen when you 'expose' someone like me...
posted by fatnigger at 7:16 AM
5 Comments:
I see that Iain, our unlearned friend, has run his post through spell check.
Fatnigger the hate will eat away at you and shorten your e life .
What has Iain done to you that makes him the main thing you write about? Shit mate you give the rest of us lefties a bad name, Fight the bastard on his arguments, which should not be that hard if he is as dumb as you say.
I object to 'Iain' not on political grounds, but aesthetic. Anyone with a modicum of taste should see him as the shit-eating scoundrel he is.
Whilst I do hate some people, I most certainly do not hate our intrepid blogger, Iain. Hate, like love, presupposes a relation between equals. Hall is not an equal, except to the earthworms...
The most interesting post here is the spam.
Keep smiling and maybe they won't kill us
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Tuesday, September 26, 06 at 08:55 am
Guardian columnist Max Hastings notices an insanity on the Left for whom he now writes:
So little confidence do some people feel in the virtues of their own societies that they are willing to suppose bin Laden might be, well, a bit right.
He also accepts that such people face annihilation from this same bin Laden they think might be, well, a bit right:
Yet we shall be lucky to get through the next 10 years without weapons of mass destruction being used somewhere in the world, quite likely against us.
Yet given this deadly self-loathing and even deadlier threat, he feeds the conceit of Bush-haters and Blair-loathers that there was a nice way to fight off this menace, largely involving us proving we were nice.
They will be defeated only when the West’s counter-vision is perceived by reasonable people as just and unselfish.
And such an argument can but add to the self-loathing of the West and the gloating certainty of Islamists that make this conflict so dangerous.
UPDATE. Former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar takes a different tack:
"It is interesting to note that while a lot of people in the world are asking the pope to apologise for his speech, I have never heard a Muslim say sorry for having conquered Spain and occupying it for eight centuries.”
22 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
A sorry Latham
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Tuesday, September 26, 06 at 08:31 am
Mark Latham’s new book, released today, prompts many to divulge even more reasons to marvel that he was ever Labor’s candidate for Prime Minister.
Former Labor Minister Barry Cohen, for instance, tackles Latham’s lousy memory of a visit to Cohen’s nature park, and includes a little anecdote of the kind that so perfectly gives the measure of a man - or a self-obsessed me-me:
Latham also has memory lapses. He forgot to mention what happened during lunch. Having raised three sons, we should have known better than leave my wife Rae’s prized piece of porcelain on the coffee table. Oliver, a two-year-old, picked it up and smashed it into a thousand pieces - at his father’s feet. It was not Oliver’s fault, but ours.
Rae showed remarkable restraint. White knuckles, an intake of oxygen and a gurgled “Oh, dear”, was her only indication of pain.
Mark showed even greater restraint. He didn’t even notice. No apology. No “I’m sorry”. No attempt to clean up the debris. Nothing. It was a minor incident in life’s rich tapestry but it revealed the true nature of Mark Latham.
As he departed, the First Lady hissed through gritted teeth: “If that bastard ever becomes leader of the Labor Party, I’m voting Liberal.” She kept her promise. Fortunately for Australia, she was not alone.
6 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Forum - Tuesday, September 26
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Tuesday, September 26, 06 at 08:16 am
Say whatever you like right here, from “you’re right, of course” to “happy birthday”.
47 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Dam right
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Tuesday, September 26, 06 at 08:10 am
Finally someone suggests that the breathless try breathing:
Prof Cullen said the dry weather could be caused by a dramatic climate change acceleration or a drought worsening the effects of the expected levels of climate change.
Either way, he says, Melbourne needs to take action on water security.
“When you look at Melbourne in particular, you have that (climate change) stress and on top of that . . . you are looking at putting another million people into Melbourne over the 30-40 year period,” he said. “It’s not a great combination.”
Prof Cullen said building new dams should not be ruled out in Victoria despite the Bracks Government’s policy of having no new dams.
“If we had a site and a new dam was a cost effective way of meeting our needs then it should be there,” he said.
The refusal of the government to even cost a new dam is a stunning example of how religion messes with men’s minds. You’d laugh if you weren’t so thirsty.
UPDATE. The conventional wisdom stupidity on dams:
World Wildlife Fund freshwater policy manager Averil Bones said cultural change, education and community programs were the most effective ways to save water.
The Government should be using money allocated to pipeline construction for recycling projects and individual water-saving initiatives.
Global evidence from similar projects showed large-scale pipelines and dams tended not to solve the problem.
I guess that building the giant Thomson dam on which Melbourne now depends “tended not to solve the problem” either. Please then define “the problem”.
10 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
The Left disgusted with itself
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Monday, September 25, 06 at 09:34 am
More in the Left do understand how shamefully their fellow travellers have betrayed their alleged principles.
Today, for instance, former Vietnam War protester Kerry Langer asks the Left why on earth it’s against President George W. Bush’s strategy to protect us from terrorism by promoting democracy:
Those who oppose current US policy have failed to look beyond the superficial appearance of things to see the deeper reality. The pseudo-Left opposition is driven by a backward-looking victim mentality focused on complaining about how bad things are rather than on how to change them. Objectively they are united with the conservative Right, which is similarly beset by doom and gloom due to not yet having come to terms with the very limited options available to the last superpower.
Quite simply: It’s no longer possible for the US to hold back the spread of democracy and modernity across the planet. This is something that we on the Left should celebrate, support and take advantage of.
Ross Fizgerald then wonders why civil libertarians haven’t done more to defend the Pope’s right to free speech or to damn the Victorian Government’s oppressive vilification laws:
Why else is it that virtually all the law reformers squealing about the loss of free speech under Philip Ruddock’s anti-terror and anti-hate laws did not speak up for free speech a decade or two ago when governments really started to muzzle people for reasons of political correctness?
As we’ve seen in recent weeks with requests for freedom-of-information documents by this newspaper being knocked back by governments and the courts, free speech in Australia is under the hammer.
We have anti-vilification laws put in place by worthy do-gooders and minority groups that may well live to see the day when such legislation will be used against them.
How did the Left come to be against democracy and free speech? On the Insiders panel yesterday there was even tacit support for the Thai military coup.
23 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Refugee politics
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Monday, September 25, 06 at 09:21 am
Played like a harp:
THE plot finally coalesced after years in and out of filthy Indonesian jail cells: equip a small outrigger for the long trip from Papua to Australia, fill it with people selected expressly for their likelihood of winning asylum and wait for the political fallout.
Expedition leader Herman Wanggai - now living in Melbourne after being granted a temporary protection visa in March - spent more than two years travelling to far-flung reaches of Indonesian Papua recruiting the best people he could find for the project.
Two other things were needed for this to succeed. First, Immigration officials who were too politically committed or too terrified of seeming nasty in these post-Rau days of repentence to dare turn these people back. Second, an active and irresponsible hate-Indonesia lobby of academics, churchmen, Leftist politicians and journalists who did not want for a second to question the claims of these"refugees" or ask what kind of dangers they truly faced back in Indonesia. To this day we still don’t know.
5 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
And remember: he was this close to being your leader
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Monday, September 25, 06 at 08:52 am
Mark Latham has dived back in the toilet with his new book, A Conga Line of Suckholes, out tomorrow:
MARK LATHAM reckons the good old-fashioned Australian “bloke” is in crisis, and has been replaced by “nervous wrecks, metrosexual knobs and toss-bags”.
In his latest acid musings, the former Labor leader laments a supposed “decline in Australian male culture” which is “one of the saddest things I have witnessed”.
Actually, it’s the decline in the culture of one Australian male in particular that has been so sad. Who could have thought this skiting, foul-mouthed, erratic and hate-filled thug was only two years ago Labor’s choice for Prime Minister? Who are the Labor politicians that urged us to put ourselves under the leadership of such a man, and why should we trust a party run by people of such appalling and reckless judgment again?
Back to the book:
It is an eclectic collection, with gems plucked from Plato and Shakespeare through to Gandhi, Churchill and Stalin. There is a fair sprinkling of Lathamisms as well, though most of his own contributions stand out more for invective than wit.
Compare, for example, Churchill’s dismissal of his opponent Clement Attlee as a “sheep in a sheep’s clothing” with Latham’s line that “Howard has got his tongue up Bush’s clacker that often the poor guy must think he’s got an extra hemorrhoid."
The inclusion of quotations from people such as Shakespeare and Gandhi is doubtless to inform us that clever Mark has actually read improving stuff. The inclusion of his own quotatations informs us that it clearly didn’t understand a word of it.
As for Melbourne University Press, what on earth is it doing to its reputations, first publishing the ill-informed anti-Israeli drivel of Antony Loewenstein and now this sludge from Latham? Is it so hard up for a quick buck or has Jew-kicking and manure-flinging gone mainstream in the academia Left?
What? Oh.
37 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
A religion too scary even for South Park
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Monday, September 25, 06 at 08:47 am
South Park stops laughing:
"That’s where we kind of agree with some of the people who’ve criticized our show,” Stone says. “Because it really is open season on Jesus. We can do whatever we want to Jesus, and we have. We’ve had him say bad words. We’ve had him shoot a gun. We’ve had him kill people. We can do whatever we want. But Mohammed, we couldn’t just show a simple image.”
During the part of the show where Mohammed was to be depicted — benignly, Stone and Parker say — the show ran a black screen that read: “Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network.”
Other networks took a similar course, refusing to air images of Mohammed — even when reporting on the Denmark cartoon riots — claiming they were refraining because they’re religiously tolerant, the South Park creators say.
“No you’re not,” Stone retorts. “You’re afraid of getting blown up. That’s what you’re afraid of. Comedy Central copped to that, you know: ‘We’re afraid of getting blown up.’"
(Via Instapundit)
31 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Too nice if he dies this way
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Monday, September 25, 06 at 08:26 am
Perhaps there is more to this rumor than I first thought:
The fate of Osama Bin Laden was the subject of intense debate last night after a leaked intelligence report claimed he had died of typhoid.
But the document was quickly contradicted by a security source in Saudi Arabia - where the Al Qaeda leader was born, and many of his family still live - who said he was still alive, but extremely unwell.
The French security report claimed the terrorist mastermind died in a remote region of Pakistan last month.
But it would be a pity or worse if bin Laden didn’t die more shamefully.
22 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Forum - Monday, September 25
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Monday, September 25, 06 at 08:24 am
As you were saying…
58 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Forum - Sunday, September 24
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Sunday, September 24, 06 at 08:39 am
Vent here, even if the latest news is that the ozone hole is growing, not shrinking.
29 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Ataturk's enemies no friends of us or our Muslims
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Sunday, September 24, 06 at 07:57 am
Keysar Trad, former translator for the pro-bin Laden and jihadist Islamic Youth Movement of Australia, calls Peter Costello an “ignorant fool" for praising the founder of modern (and secular) Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Ameer Ali, the pro-Hezbollah chairman of the Howard Government’s failed Muslim Community Reference Group, says Costello is “quite wrong” and Turkey “cannot be a good model for the Muslims”.
One other thing should be mentioned about these two men who were quoted so respectfully by the Sunday Age. Trad was also the spokesman for Sheik Taj Al-Din Al-Hilali, and Ali the head of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils which made Hilali the Mufti of Australia - and Hilali is the man who said suicide bombers were “heroes”, Jews were the cause of all wars and the September 11 attacks were “God’s work against oppressors”.
All of which says that if in an argument about the role of Islam in society, I’d rather side with Ataturk than critics of him like these. He knew well the danger to Muslims of a religion represented by extremists such as these, and the rest of us must be grateful to him for his vision and his legacy.
But how dumb are we to now duchess the kind of Islamic “leaders” that Ataturk would have spurned? The Government - and the media - must look to others to represent Australia’s Muslims, and I doubt such leaders will be clerics of the kind of which we hae far too many.
26 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Giving Time to a spy
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Sunday, September 24, 06 at 07:54 am
AP reports on the death of a spy:
Pham Xuan An, a Vietnamese man who led a perilous double life as communist spy and respected reporter for Western news organizations during the Vietnam War, has died, according to his son, Pham Xuan Hoang An…
In the history of wartime espionage, few have been as successful as An. He straddled two worlds for most of the 15- year war in Indochina as an undercover communist agent while also working as a journalist: first for Reuters news service and then for 10 years as Time magazine’s chief Vietnamese reporter - a role that gave him access to military bases and background briefings.
Can we be surprised that An could fit in so well at Time or AP?
And can we presume that no such thing happens today? Think only of the document from Saddam’s spy agency that boasted of having a source in AP. Think of the recent controversy over doctoring of pictures by Reuters’ Lebanese staff. Or think of Time todayemploying as its Baghdad correspondent the Australian Michael Ware, who, while no spy, maintains close connections to terrorists in Iraq who let him live only because (he concedes) he is more useful to them alive than dead.
Says Ware:
I’ve seen into their eyes. I find them terrifying. I mean, these are very committed men. And at any moment they could turn on me. I could suddenly be decided he’s more valuable to us on a video being terrorised than he is, you know, discussing our movement and what we’re showing him.
5 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Bodies broken better than bodies bared
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Saturday, September 23, 06 at 10:08 am
All that needs to be said, really:
Alleged terror leader Abu Bakar Bashir said TV shows featuring scantily clad women were more harmful than the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings.
And some people still think such madmen are simply reacting to US foriegin policies.
36 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Muslim leaders can't get that outrage going
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Saturday, September 23, 06 at 09:53 am
Iraq the Model brings good news from Baghdad:
Anyway, it looks like the reaction of Muslims were not as violent or as bloody as the leaders wished them to be and that’s why they’re now provoking and yelling at the “sleeping” masses and pushing them to show more fury.
They want to add another big scene to the countless previous ones—angry mobs burning flags and pledging to destroy the “infidels”.
Actually their latest calls for MORE ANGER are becoming pretty much like begging.
Iran thinks the Muslim people fell short of doing their duty and Qaradawi calls Muslims to have a “day of fury”.
All these are theatrical acts directed by governments and corrupt clerics seeking controlled anger among the mobs to use in intimidating the west and discouraging it from applying more pressure on, or calling for changing, these tyrannical regimes.
Keep smiling and maybe they won't kill us
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Tuesday, September 26, 06 at 08:55 am
Guardian columnist Max Hastings notices an insanity on the Left for whom he now writes:
So little confidence do some people feel in the virtues of their own societies that they are willing to suppose bin Laden might be, well, a bit right.
He also accepts that such people face annihilation from this same bin Laden they think might be, well, a bit right:
Yet we shall be lucky to get through the next 10 years without weapons of mass destruction being used somewhere in the world, quite likely against us.
Yet given this deadly self-loathing and even deadlier threat, he feeds the conceit of Bush-haters and Blair-loathers that there was a nice way to fight off this menace, largely involving us proving we were nice.
They will be defeated only when the West’s counter-vision is perceived by reasonable people as just and unselfish.
And such an argument can but add to the self-loathing of the West and the gloating certainty of Islamists that make this conflict so dangerous.
UPDATE. Former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar takes a different tack:
"It is interesting to note that while a lot of people in the world are asking the pope to apologise for his speech, I have never heard a Muslim say sorry for having conquered Spain and occupying it for eight centuries.”
22 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
A sorry Latham
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Tuesday, September 26, 06 at 08:31 am
Mark Latham’s new book, released today, prompts many to divulge even more reasons to marvel that he was ever Labor’s candidate for Prime Minister.
Former Labor Minister Barry Cohen, for instance, tackles Latham’s lousy memory of a visit to Cohen’s nature park, and includes a little anecdote of the kind that so perfectly gives the measure of a man - or a self-obsessed me-me:
Latham also has memory lapses. He forgot to mention what happened during lunch. Having raised three sons, we should have known better than leave my wife Rae’s prized piece of porcelain on the coffee table. Oliver, a two-year-old, picked it up and smashed it into a thousand pieces - at his father’s feet. It was not Oliver’s fault, but ours.
Rae showed remarkable restraint. White knuckles, an intake of oxygen and a gurgled “Oh, dear”, was her only indication of pain.
Mark showed even greater restraint. He didn’t even notice. No apology. No “I’m sorry”. No attempt to clean up the debris. Nothing. It was a minor incident in life’s rich tapestry but it revealed the true nature of Mark Latham.
As he departed, the First Lady hissed through gritted teeth: “If that bastard ever becomes leader of the Labor Party, I’m voting Liberal.” She kept her promise. Fortunately for Australia, she was not alone.
6 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Forum - Tuesday, September 26
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Tuesday, September 26, 06 at 08:16 am
Say whatever you like right here, from “you’re right, of course” to “happy birthday”.
47 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Dam right
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Tuesday, September 26, 06 at 08:10 am
Finally someone suggests that the breathless try breathing:
Prof Cullen said the dry weather could be caused by a dramatic climate change acceleration or a drought worsening the effects of the expected levels of climate change.
Either way, he says, Melbourne needs to take action on water security.
“When you look at Melbourne in particular, you have that (climate change) stress and on top of that . . . you are looking at putting another million people into Melbourne over the 30-40 year period,” he said. “It’s not a great combination.”
Prof Cullen said building new dams should not be ruled out in Victoria despite the Bracks Government’s policy of having no new dams.
“If we had a site and a new dam was a cost effective way of meeting our needs then it should be there,” he said.
The refusal of the government to even cost a new dam is a stunning example of how religion messes with men’s minds. You’d laugh if you weren’t so thirsty.
UPDATE. The conventional wisdom stupidity on dams:
World Wildlife Fund freshwater policy manager Averil Bones said cultural change, education and community programs were the most effective ways to save water.
The Government should be using money allocated to pipeline construction for recycling projects and individual water-saving initiatives.
Global evidence from similar projects showed large-scale pipelines and dams tended not to solve the problem.
I guess that building the giant Thomson dam on which Melbourne now depends “tended not to solve the problem” either. Please then define “the problem”.
10 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
The Left disgusted with itself
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Monday, September 25, 06 at 09:34 am
More in the Left do understand how shamefully their fellow travellers have betrayed their alleged principles.
Today, for instance, former Vietnam War protester Kerry Langer asks the Left why on earth it’s against President George W. Bush’s strategy to protect us from terrorism by promoting democracy:
Those who oppose current US policy have failed to look beyond the superficial appearance of things to see the deeper reality. The pseudo-Left opposition is driven by a backward-looking victim mentality focused on complaining about how bad things are rather than on how to change them. Objectively they are united with the conservative Right, which is similarly beset by doom and gloom due to not yet having come to terms with the very limited options available to the last superpower.
Quite simply: It’s no longer possible for the US to hold back the spread of democracy and modernity across the planet. This is something that we on the Left should celebrate, support and take advantage of.
Ross Fizgerald then wonders why civil libertarians haven’t done more to defend the Pope’s right to free speech or to damn the Victorian Government’s oppressive vilification laws:
Why else is it that virtually all the law reformers squealing about the loss of free speech under Philip Ruddock’s anti-terror and anti-hate laws did not speak up for free speech a decade or two ago when governments really started to muzzle people for reasons of political correctness?
As we’ve seen in recent weeks with requests for freedom-of-information documents by this newspaper being knocked back by governments and the courts, free speech in Australia is under the hammer.
We have anti-vilification laws put in place by worthy do-gooders and minority groups that may well live to see the day when such legislation will be used against them.
How did the Left come to be against democracy and free speech? On the Insiders panel yesterday there was even tacit support for the Thai military coup.
23 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Refugee politics
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Monday, September 25, 06 at 09:21 am
Played like a harp:
THE plot finally coalesced after years in and out of filthy Indonesian jail cells: equip a small outrigger for the long trip from Papua to Australia, fill it with people selected expressly for their likelihood of winning asylum and wait for the political fallout.
Expedition leader Herman Wanggai - now living in Melbourne after being granted a temporary protection visa in March - spent more than two years travelling to far-flung reaches of Indonesian Papua recruiting the best people he could find for the project.
Two other things were needed for this to succeed. First, Immigration officials who were too politically committed or too terrified of seeming nasty in these post-Rau days of repentence to dare turn these people back. Second, an active and irresponsible hate-Indonesia lobby of academics, churchmen, Leftist politicians and journalists who did not want for a second to question the claims of these"refugees" or ask what kind of dangers they truly faced back in Indonesia. To this day we still don’t know.
5 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
And remember: he was this close to being your leader
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Monday, September 25, 06 at 08:52 am
Mark Latham has dived back in the toilet with his new book, A Conga Line of Suckholes, out tomorrow:
MARK LATHAM reckons the good old-fashioned Australian “bloke” is in crisis, and has been replaced by “nervous wrecks, metrosexual knobs and toss-bags”.
In his latest acid musings, the former Labor leader laments a supposed “decline in Australian male culture” which is “one of the saddest things I have witnessed”.
Actually, it’s the decline in the culture of one Australian male in particular that has been so sad. Who could have thought this skiting, foul-mouthed, erratic and hate-filled thug was only two years ago Labor’s choice for Prime Minister? Who are the Labor politicians that urged us to put ourselves under the leadership of such a man, and why should we trust a party run by people of such appalling and reckless judgment again?
Back to the book:
It is an eclectic collection, with gems plucked from Plato and Shakespeare through to Gandhi, Churchill and Stalin. There is a fair sprinkling of Lathamisms as well, though most of his own contributions stand out more for invective than wit.
Compare, for example, Churchill’s dismissal of his opponent Clement Attlee as a “sheep in a sheep’s clothing” with Latham’s line that “Howard has got his tongue up Bush’s clacker that often the poor guy must think he’s got an extra hemorrhoid."
The inclusion of quotations from people such as Shakespeare and Gandhi is doubtless to inform us that clever Mark has actually read improving stuff. The inclusion of his own quotatations informs us that it clearly didn’t understand a word of it.
As for Melbourne University Press, what on earth is it doing to its reputations, first publishing the ill-informed anti-Israeli drivel of Antony Loewenstein and now this sludge from Latham? Is it so hard up for a quick buck or has Jew-kicking and manure-flinging gone mainstream in the academia Left?
What? Oh.
37 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
A religion too scary even for South Park
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Monday, September 25, 06 at 08:47 am
South Park stops laughing:
"That’s where we kind of agree with some of the people who’ve criticized our show,” Stone says. “Because it really is open season on Jesus. We can do whatever we want to Jesus, and we have. We’ve had him say bad words. We’ve had him shoot a gun. We’ve had him kill people. We can do whatever we want. But Mohammed, we couldn’t just show a simple image.”
During the part of the show where Mohammed was to be depicted — benignly, Stone and Parker say — the show ran a black screen that read: “Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network.”
Other networks took a similar course, refusing to air images of Mohammed — even when reporting on the Denmark cartoon riots — claiming they were refraining because they’re religiously tolerant, the South Park creators say.
“No you’re not,” Stone retorts. “You’re afraid of getting blown up. That’s what you’re afraid of. Comedy Central copped to that, you know: ‘We’re afraid of getting blown up.’"
(Via Instapundit)
31 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Too nice if he dies this way
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Monday, September 25, 06 at 08:26 am
Perhaps there is more to this rumor than I first thought:
The fate of Osama Bin Laden was the subject of intense debate last night after a leaked intelligence report claimed he had died of typhoid.
But the document was quickly contradicted by a security source in Saudi Arabia - where the Al Qaeda leader was born, and many of his family still live - who said he was still alive, but extremely unwell.
The French security report claimed the terrorist mastermind died in a remote region of Pakistan last month.
But it would be a pity or worse if bin Laden didn’t die more shamefully.
22 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Forum - Monday, September 25
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Monday, September 25, 06 at 08:24 am
As you were saying…
58 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Forum - Sunday, September 24
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Sunday, September 24, 06 at 08:39 am
Vent here, even if the latest news is that the ozone hole is growing, not shrinking.
29 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Ataturk's enemies no friends of us or our Muslims
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Sunday, September 24, 06 at 07:57 am
Keysar Trad, former translator for the pro-bin Laden and jihadist Islamic Youth Movement of Australia, calls Peter Costello an “ignorant fool" for praising the founder of modern (and secular) Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Ameer Ali, the pro-Hezbollah chairman of the Howard Government’s failed Muslim Community Reference Group, says Costello is “quite wrong” and Turkey “cannot be a good model for the Muslims”.
One other thing should be mentioned about these two men who were quoted so respectfully by the Sunday Age. Trad was also the spokesman for Sheik Taj Al-Din Al-Hilali, and Ali the head of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils which made Hilali the Mufti of Australia - and Hilali is the man who said suicide bombers were “heroes”, Jews were the cause of all wars and the September 11 attacks were “God’s work against oppressors”.
All of which says that if in an argument about the role of Islam in society, I’d rather side with Ataturk than critics of him like these. He knew well the danger to Muslims of a religion represented by extremists such as these, and the rest of us must be grateful to him for his vision and his legacy.
But how dumb are we to now duchess the kind of Islamic “leaders” that Ataturk would have spurned? The Government - and the media - must look to others to represent Australia’s Muslims, and I doubt such leaders will be clerics of the kind of which we hae far too many.
26 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Giving Time to a spy
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Sunday, September 24, 06 at 07:54 am
AP reports on the death of a spy:
Pham Xuan An, a Vietnamese man who led a perilous double life as communist spy and respected reporter for Western news organizations during the Vietnam War, has died, according to his son, Pham Xuan Hoang An…
In the history of wartime espionage, few have been as successful as An. He straddled two worlds for most of the 15- year war in Indochina as an undercover communist agent while also working as a journalist: first for Reuters news service and then for 10 years as Time magazine’s chief Vietnamese reporter - a role that gave him access to military bases and background briefings.
Can we be surprised that An could fit in so well at Time or AP?
And can we presume that no such thing happens today? Think only of the document from Saddam’s spy agency that boasted of having a source in AP. Think of the recent controversy over doctoring of pictures by Reuters’ Lebanese staff. Or think of Time todayemploying as its Baghdad correspondent the Australian Michael Ware, who, while no spy, maintains close connections to terrorists in Iraq who let him live only because (he concedes) he is more useful to them alive than dead.
Says Ware:
I’ve seen into their eyes. I find them terrifying. I mean, these are very committed men. And at any moment they could turn on me. I could suddenly be decided he’s more valuable to us on a video being terrorised than he is, you know, discussing our movement and what we’re showing him.
5 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Bodies broken better than bodies bared
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Saturday, September 23, 06 at 10:08 am
All that needs to be said, really:
Alleged terror leader Abu Bakar Bashir said TV shows featuring scantily clad women were more harmful than the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings.
And some people still think such madmen are simply reacting to US foriegin policies.
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Muslim leaders can't get that outrage going
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Saturday, September 23, 06 at 09:53 am
Iraq the Model brings good news from Baghdad:
Anyway, it looks like the reaction of Muslims were not as violent or as bloody as the leaders wished them to be and that’s why they’re now provoking and yelling at the “sleeping” masses and pushing them to show more fury.
They want to add another big scene to the countless previous ones—angry mobs burning flags and pledging to destroy the “infidels”.
Actually their latest calls for MORE ANGER are becoming pretty much like begging.
Iran thinks the Muslim people fell short of doing their duty and Qaradawi calls Muslims to have a “day of fury”.
All these are theatrical acts directed by governments and corrupt clerics seeking controlled anger among the mobs to use in intimidating the west and discouraging it from applying more pressure on, or calling for changing, these tyrannical regimes.
Keep smiling and maybe they won't kill us
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Tuesday, September 26, 06 at 08:55 am
Guardian columnist Max Hastings notices an insanity on the Left for whom he now writes:
So little confidence do some people feel in the virtues of their own societies that they are willing to suppose bin Laden might be, well, a bit right.
He also accepts that such people face annihilation from this same bin Laden they think might be, well, a bit right:
Yet we shall be lucky to get through the next 10 years without weapons of mass destruction being used somewhere in the world, quite likely against us.
Yet given this deadly self-loathing and even deadlier threat, he feeds the conceit of Bush-haters and Blair-loathers that there was a nice way to fight off this menace, largely involving us proving we were nice.
They will be defeated only when the West’s counter-vision is perceived by reasonable people as just and unselfish.
And such an argument can but add to the self-loathing of the West and the gloating certainty of Islamists that make this conflict so dangerous.
UPDATE. Former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar takes a different tack:
"It is interesting to note that while a lot of people in the world are asking the pope to apologise for his speech, I have never heard a Muslim say sorry for having conquered Spain and occupying it for eight centuries.”
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A sorry Latham
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Tuesday, September 26, 06 at 08:31 am
Mark Latham’s new book, released today, prompts many to divulge even more reasons to marvel that he was ever Labor’s candidate for Prime Minister.
Former Labor Minister Barry Cohen, for instance, tackles Latham’s lousy memory of a visit to Cohen’s nature park, and includes a little anecdote of the kind that so perfectly gives the measure of a man - or a self-obsessed me-me:
Latham also has memory lapses. He forgot to mention what happened during lunch. Having raised three sons, we should have known better than leave my wife Rae’s prized piece of porcelain on the coffee table. Oliver, a two-year-old, picked it up and smashed it into a thousand pieces - at his father’s feet. It was not Oliver’s fault, but ours.
Rae showed remarkable restraint. White knuckles, an intake of oxygen and a gurgled “Oh, dear”, was her only indication of pain.
Mark showed even greater restraint. He didn’t even notice. No apology. No “I’m sorry”. No attempt to clean up the debris. Nothing. It was a minor incident in life’s rich tapestry but it revealed the true nature of Mark Latham.
As he departed, the First Lady hissed through gritted teeth: “If that bastard ever becomes leader of the Labor Party, I’m voting Liberal.” She kept her promise. Fortunately for Australia, she was not alone.
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Forum - Tuesday, September 26
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Tuesday, September 26, 06 at 08:16 am
Say whatever you like right here, from “you’re right, of course” to “happy birthday”.
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Dam right
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Tuesday, September 26, 06 at 08:10 am
Finally someone suggests that the breathless try breathing:
Prof Cullen said the dry weather could be caused by a dramatic climate change acceleration or a drought worsening the effects of the expected levels of climate change.
Either way, he says, Melbourne needs to take action on water security.
“When you look at Melbourne in particular, you have that (climate change) stress and on top of that . . . you are looking at putting another million people into Melbourne over the 30-40 year period,” he said. “It’s not a great combination.”
Prof Cullen said building new dams should not be ruled out in Victoria despite the Bracks Government’s policy of having no new dams.
“If we had a site and a new dam was a cost effective way of meeting our needs then it should be there,” he said.
The refusal of the government to even cost a new dam is a stunning example of how religion messes with men’s minds. You’d laugh if you weren’t so thirsty.
UPDATE. The conventional wisdom stupidity on dams:
World Wildlife Fund freshwater policy manager Averil Bones said cultural change, education and community programs were the most effective ways to save water.
The Government should be using money allocated to pipeline construction for recycling projects and individual water-saving initiatives.
Global evidence from similar projects showed large-scale pipelines and dams tended not to solve the problem.
I guess that building the giant Thomson dam on which Melbourne now depends “tended not to solve the problem” either. Please then define “the problem”.
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The Left disgusted with itself
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Monday, September 25, 06 at 09:34 am
More in the Left do understand how shamefully their fellow travellers have betrayed their alleged principles.
Today, for instance, former Vietnam War protester Kerry Langer asks the Left why on earth it’s against President George W. Bush’s strategy to protect us from terrorism by promoting democracy:
Those who oppose current US policy have failed to look beyond the superficial appearance of things to see the deeper reality. The pseudo-Left opposition is driven by a backward-looking victim mentality focused on complaining about how bad things are rather than on how to change them. Objectively they are united with the conservative Right, which is similarly beset by doom and gloom due to not yet having come to terms with the very limited options available to the last superpower.
Quite simply: It’s no longer possible for the US to hold back the spread of democracy and modernity across the planet. This is something that we on the Left should celebrate, support and take advantage of.
Ross Fizgerald then wonders why civil libertarians haven’t done more to defend the Pope’s right to free speech or to damn the Victorian Government’s oppressive vilification laws:
Why else is it that virtually all the law reformers squealing about the loss of free speech under Philip Ruddock’s anti-terror and anti-hate laws did not speak up for free speech a decade or two ago when governments really started to muzzle people for reasons of political correctness?
As we’ve seen in recent weeks with requests for freedom-of-information documents by this newspaper being knocked back by governments and the courts, free speech in Australia is under the hammer.
We have anti-vilification laws put in place by worthy do-gooders and minority groups that may well live to see the day when such legislation will be used against them.
How did the Left come to be against democracy and free speech? On the Insiders panel yesterday there was even tacit support for the Thai military coup.
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Refugee politics
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Monday, September 25, 06 at 09:21 am
Played like a harp:
THE plot finally coalesced after years in and out of filthy Indonesian jail cells: equip a small outrigger for the long trip from Papua to Australia, fill it with people selected expressly for their likelihood of winning asylum and wait for the political fallout.
Expedition leader Herman Wanggai - now living in Melbourne after being granted a temporary protection visa in March - spent more than two years travelling to far-flung reaches of Indonesian Papua recruiting the best people he could find for the project.
Two other things were needed for this to succeed. First, Immigration officials who were too politically committed or too terrified of seeming nasty in these post-Rau days of repentence to dare turn these people back. Second, an active and irresponsible hate-Indonesia lobby of academics, churchmen, Leftist politicians and journalists who did not want for a second to question the claims of these"refugees" or ask what kind of dangers they truly faced back in Indonesia. To this day we still don’t know.
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And remember: he was this close to being your leader
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Monday, September 25, 06 at 08:52 am
Mark Latham has dived back in the toilet with his new book, A Conga Line of Suckholes, out tomorrow:
MARK LATHAM reckons the good old-fashioned Australian “bloke” is in crisis, and has been replaced by “nervous wrecks, metrosexual knobs and toss-bags”.
In his latest acid musings, the former Labor leader laments a supposed “decline in Australian male culture” which is “one of the saddest things I have witnessed”.
Actually, it’s the decline in the culture of one Australian male in particular that has been so sad. Who could have thought this skiting, foul-mouthed, erratic and hate-filled thug was only two years ago Labor’s choice for Prime Minister? Who are the Labor politicians that urged us to put ourselves under the leadership of such a man, and why should we trust a party run by people of such appalling and reckless judgment again?
Back to the book:
It is an eclectic collection, with gems plucked from Plato and Shakespeare through to Gandhi, Churchill and Stalin. There is a fair sprinkling of Lathamisms as well, though most of his own contributions stand out more for invective than wit.
Compare, for example, Churchill’s dismissal of his opponent Clement Attlee as a “sheep in a sheep’s clothing” with Latham’s line that “Howard has got his tongue up Bush’s clacker that often the poor guy must think he’s got an extra hemorrhoid."
The inclusion of quotations from people such as Shakespeare and Gandhi is doubtless to inform us that clever Mark has actually read improving stuff. The inclusion of his own quotatations informs us that it clearly didn’t understand a word of it.
As for Melbourne University Press, what on earth is it doing to its reputations, first publishing the ill-informed anti-Israeli drivel of Antony Loewenstein and now this sludge from Latham? Is it so hard up for a quick buck or has Jew-kicking and manure-flinging gone mainstream in the academia Left?
What? Oh.
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A religion too scary even for South Park
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Monday, September 25, 06 at 08:47 am
South Park stops laughing:
"That’s where we kind of agree with some of the people who’ve criticized our show,” Stone says. “Because it really is open season on Jesus. We can do whatever we want to Jesus, and we have. We’ve had him say bad words. We’ve had him shoot a gun. We’ve had him kill people. We can do whatever we want. But Mohammed, we couldn’t just show a simple image.”
During the part of the show where Mohammed was to be depicted — benignly, Stone and Parker say — the show ran a black screen that read: “Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network.”
Other networks took a similar course, refusing to air images of Mohammed — even when reporting on the Denmark cartoon riots — claiming they were refraining because they’re religiously tolerant, the South Park creators say.
“No you’re not,” Stone retorts. “You’re afraid of getting blown up. That’s what you’re afraid of. Comedy Central copped to that, you know: ‘We’re afraid of getting blown up.’"
(Via Instapundit)
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Too nice if he dies this way
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Monday, September 25, 06 at 08:26 am
Perhaps there is more to this rumor than I first thought:
The fate of Osama Bin Laden was the subject of intense debate last night after a leaked intelligence report claimed he had died of typhoid.
But the document was quickly contradicted by a security source in Saudi Arabia - where the Al Qaeda leader was born, and many of his family still live - who said he was still alive, but extremely unwell.
The French security report claimed the terrorist mastermind died in a remote region of Pakistan last month.
But it would be a pity or worse if bin Laden didn’t die more shamefully.
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Forum - Monday, September 25
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Monday, September 25, 06 at 08:24 am
As you were saying…
58 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Forum - Sunday, September 24
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Sunday, September 24, 06 at 08:39 am
Vent here, even if the latest news is that the ozone hole is growing, not shrinking.
29 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Ataturk's enemies no friends of us or our Muslims
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Sunday, September 24, 06 at 07:57 am
Keysar Trad, former translator for the pro-bin Laden and jihadist Islamic Youth Movement of Australia, calls Peter Costello an “ignorant fool" for praising the founder of modern (and secular) Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Ameer Ali, the pro-Hezbollah chairman of the Howard Government’s failed Muslim Community Reference Group, says Costello is “quite wrong” and Turkey “cannot be a good model for the Muslims”.
One other thing should be mentioned about these two men who were quoted so respectfully by the Sunday Age. Trad was also the spokesman for Sheik Taj Al-Din Al-Hilali, and Ali the head of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils which made Hilali the Mufti of Australia - and Hilali is the man who said suicide bombers were “heroes”, Jews were the cause of all wars and the September 11 attacks were “God’s work against oppressors”.
All of which says that if in an argument about the role of Islam in society, I’d rather side with Ataturk than critics of him like these. He knew well the danger to Muslims of a religion represented by extremists such as these, and the rest of us must be grateful to him for his vision and his legacy.
But how dumb are we to now duchess the kind of Islamic “leaders” that Ataturk would have spurned? The Government - and the media - must look to others to represent Australia’s Muslims, and I doubt such leaders will be clerics of the kind of which we hae far too many.
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Giving Time to a spy
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Sunday, September 24, 06 at 07:54 am
AP reports on the death of a spy:
Pham Xuan An, a Vietnamese man who led a perilous double life as communist spy and respected reporter for Western news organizations during the Vietnam War, has died, according to his son, Pham Xuan Hoang An…
In the history of wartime espionage, few have been as successful as An. He straddled two worlds for most of the 15- year war in Indochina as an undercover communist agent while also working as a journalist: first for Reuters news service and then for 10 years as Time magazine’s chief Vietnamese reporter - a role that gave him access to military bases and background briefings.
Can we be surprised that An could fit in so well at Time or AP?
And can we presume that no such thing happens today? Think only of the document from Saddam’s spy agency that boasted of having a source in AP. Think of the recent controversy over doctoring of pictures by Reuters’ Lebanese staff. Or think of Time todayemploying as its Baghdad correspondent the Australian Michael Ware, who, while no spy, maintains close connections to terrorists in Iraq who let him live only because (he concedes) he is more useful to them alive than dead.
Says Ware:
I’ve seen into their eyes. I find them terrifying. I mean, these are very committed men. And at any moment they could turn on me. I could suddenly be decided he’s more valuable to us on a video being terrorised than he is, you know, discussing our movement and what we’re showing him.
5 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Bodies broken better than bodies bared
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Saturday, September 23, 06 at 10:08 am
All that needs to be said, really:
Alleged terror leader Abu Bakar Bashir said TV shows featuring scantily clad women were more harmful than the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings.
And some people still think such madmen are simply reacting to US foriegin policies.
36 comment(s) about this story | Permalink
Muslim leaders can't get that outrage going
Posted by Andrew Bolt on Saturday, September 23, 06 at 09:53 am
Iraq the Model brings good news from Baghdad:
Anyway, it looks like the reaction of Muslims were not as violent or as bloody as the leaders wished them to be and that’s why they’re now provoking and yelling at the “sleeping” masses and pushing them to show more fury.
They want to add another big scene to the countless previous ones—angry mobs burning flags and pledging to destroy the “infidels”.
Actually their latest calls for MORE ANGER are becoming pretty much like begging.
Iran thinks the Muslim people fell short of doing their duty and Qaradawi calls Muslims to have a “day of fury”.
All these are theatrical acts directed by governments and corrupt clerics seeking controlled anger among the mobs to use in intimidating the west and discouraging it from applying more pressure on, or calling for changing, these tyrannical regimes.
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